The Bombay Manifesto – Redux

Calvin Ayre looks back at his 1997 Bombay Manifesto, where he talks about the foundational principles that lead the Bodog Group of Companies to success. This article was originally published on CalvinAyre.com on November 17, 2009.

During an email conversation a couple of weeks ago one of our senior staff members had asked me if I had a copy of “The Bombay Manifesto” kicking around. It took some serious digging on my part but I did eventually find it. Anyway, I thought it might be kind of fun to share that document with you now, on my blog. Keep in mind that this article was written back in a time when the Internet was still young, the World Wide Web was still very new…and I had recently switched from Tanqueray to Bombay Sapphire gin.

But I digress.

I started what became the Bodog Group of Companies in the early 1990s. At this time the world was just feeling its way through the thorny issue of what a website really is. Hyperlinks were a fringe concept restricted to a few abstract thinkers and sci-fi writers. I, however, was convinced that the Internet and more specifically the Web in the case of this article would be significant forces in a global societal change that was already under way. The Bodog Group was no exception.

We were so much ahead of the curve that we had no online references to go by. Everything we did we had to invent from scratch using real world examples. At this time the technical guys were making all the decisions, but I thought this was backwards. I remember thinking that the end users would be average Joes, so it was really they that should be driving the design of the user interfaces, not highly skilled, and in many cases, highly intelligent technology professionals.

I did not really qualify for the “average Joe” title, but I did have a background that I thought would make me more qualified to design user interfaces than many others in the industry. While I was going to University, instead of getting a summer job I bought an old 5-ton truck with an insulated box and a refrigeration unit. I fixed this truck up, took it over to the local fruit orchards, loaded it full of whatever was in season and headed out on a 20-hour drive to the prairies to sell fruit on the side of the road in small towns. This was my first business.

In the countless hours I spent selling fruit for a number of summers while going to university, I got an opportunity to really get inside the consumers head by selling products as basic as peaches and cherries. The reality is that all purchase decisions are basically handled the same. These same lessons, ingrained in my brain so many years ago, were pulled back out in designing our websites. I believe that the basic principles of design that we pioneered are a big reason for the success of the BoDog.com group today. Our websites are designed from start to finish with the end user experience in mind, and we have easy, and prompted (we ask for it), feedback systems in place to let the end users have direct input into the evolution of our web site.

This process is also driven by a philosophy that every person in our organization, and every point of contact (web, etc), are all inextricably part of the customer service we offer. By the end of the 1990’s we had a very good website design and were responsible for many of the innovations that are considered mainstays for any company in our industry. While sitting in my office one evening in Costa Rica I got to thinking about all we had learned over the years. I thought I would codify some of this knowledge to use as a training tool for our team.

Since I was sipping on an ice cold Bombay Gin Martini at the time, the document was somewhat imperially titled “The Bombay Manifesto”. This email was then forwarded to the entire company at the time. I got on with my affairs and forgot entirely about even doing this until talking to some of the developers at our spring Bodog bonus party and one of them mentioned The Bombay Manifesto. I got a bit of a laugh out of this since I clearly remember writing it. I asked if anyone had a copy of it and sure enough they all said they still did and still referred to it once in awhile.

The next day I got it forwarded to me in its original form with the date and time still attached. Though our thinking has certainly evolved since I did this up but here’s a copy of the original “Bombay Manifesto” as it appeared on our website, over 4 years after I originally wrote it. It’s in its original form, with all of the spelling and grammar mistakes included.

Here’s a copy of the original “Bombay Manifesto” as it appeared on our website, over 4 years after I originally wrote it.

The Bombay Manifesto

Saturday, December 23, 1997 7:08 PM

I am sitting here in the back of the call center, admiring how well things are running these days compared to the past… quietly sipping on an ice-cold Bombay martini (I cleaned out the one store that carries my favorite brand of gin a few days ago) and started thinking of our websites. I have been dumping a lot of advice over the last little bit due to changes in webdev and customer service and recently have been thinking of putting some basic principles down that are working well for us that everyone can take advantage of. Anyways…here is my opinion on why our website is so good in general principles (note this is customized for our industry and not in order cause I am too lazy now that I have most of my first drink polished off):

1. End user psychological profiling drives everything. We need to be in their heads so we can simultaneously give them what they want while getting them to do what we want.
2. Speed is always important.
3. The less clicks the better…any way you can remove steps – do it. Lowest possible barrier to entry always.
4. Never let the users be more than one click away from customer service. We have a customer service email link on every page in the same spot.
5. Use graphics to excite the players to get them to do things we want, but once they start doing what we want… keep the process the definitive utilitarian maximization…clean and fast. When you do use graphics…use the right amount (see 2. above!).
6. Do not make anyone think if you can design it so they do not have to…keep it simple.
7. Outsource the management of any content you can since this is not our core business. Our embedded research links gives us the best info available to our players at almost no management cost to us.
8. Use pop-ups properly…they can be a huge advantage for sophisticated users or a huge pain in the ass if not done properly. Avoid multiple replication of the same pages in different windows and make sure the pop-ups are named properly so users can manage them.
9. Make sure the repeat users do not have to suffer through something just cause the newbies will like it.
10. Do not collect useless information…just to “let” someone do business with us. Again…lowest possible barrier to entry.
11. Put the “meat” of the site out front…let them drill for the insignificant stuff.
12. No dead-ends…if there’s nothing there, don’t let them in.
13. If you have a link on the site…make sure it works.
14. If you change the site…make sure the site copy (the information) is still accurate.
15. The first level of customer service is the web site (actually being able to easily and simply use the product is the ultimate customer service) itself… the users will only call in because the system or site design is not good enough. Improve the site using customer “advice”.

I gotta go refill my glass, so anyone else that can think of anything I didn’t touch on can add to this and someone can actually do up a more formal web site manifesto from this that can be used as a training aid for the entire team. Anyway…gotta go fill my glass. 🙂

Calvin Ayre talks iGaming and Bitcoin on the My Big Break Almost podcast

This article was originally published on CoinGeek on April 14, 2020.

This article first appeared on CalvinAyre.com.

Calvin Ayre has led quite a life, going from humble beginnings to becoming a leader of both the online gaming and Bitcoin industries. On the podcast My Big Break Almost, hosts Paul and Lindy spoke with Ayre, exploring his history and what he’s up to now.

Phoning in from his COVID-19 quarantine home in Panama, Ayre first spoke about his current mission, which is to round up personal protective equipment (PPE) supplies for Antigua. He’s happy to be in Panama, where facilities are top notch, and where he visited many times when he previously lived in Costa Rica.

Paul has been a big fan of Bodog, and asked Ayre to talk about how the company got started. The name came from a list of criteria to make it as memorable and marketable as possible. Otherwise, having been raised on a Saskatchewan pig farm, Calvin started the company with a mere $10,000, and a lot of hard work. “To make a company, you have to use your own time when you’re starting companies,” he said. “You have to use your time as a substitute for capital.”

That doesn’t mean everything went perfectly, but Ayre notes that there’s nothing he regrets about what he’s built. “I don’t really have a big, I wish I wouldn’t have done that moment,” he said. “I kind of seem to have a skill for taking disasters and finding a way to make it work into something positive.” The bottom line for the Bodog founder is that he rather take the risk of trying something, than to always wonder what could have been.

A big part of the Bodog brand has always been the parties, and that helped keep the company so interesting to Ayre for so many years. “What made it so fun, because it was an entertainment brand, partying was part of the brand,” he said. He noted that parties weren’t just a perk, but a strategy of building the brand into something bigger, using them to attract, influence and partner with several influential people in the industry.

The hosts of the podcast showed a curiosity about the billionaire life throughout the podcast, and Ayre noted that, unlike other tycoons that might be into cars or other extravagant purchases, his interest has been in building houses. He likes to be personally involved in designing and building homes all over the world, with houses in Antigua, Canada, Thailand, and the Philippines.

Ayre’s current focus is on Bitcoin, and he had to explain to the hosts the basics of what Bitcoin is and its purpose to allow microtransactions and act as an immutable ledger. It’s also capable of monetizing data. He explained further:

“What I’ve done, I’m working with Craig, myself and others, and we’re bringing the original design back that had been abused by people, after he let it go in the wild, and it’s now trading on the exchanges as BSV, Bitcoin Satoshi Vision, and it’s the only one in the world that scales massively, has utility and does all of the things, it’s the original design that he launched in 2009.”

He also noted the real world utility that is already possible on Bitcoin SV. Pointing to the American healthcare company EHR Data, Bitcoin SV is being used to help track healthcare data and combat the opioid epidemic in the United States.

Ayre expects to see a thriving Bitcoin industry next 2-3 years, when “the industry will take on a life of its own.” But he’s not really focusing on running a company in the space; his emphasis is on being an advisor and investor in a totally new industry.

That’s not all Ayre is working on though. He teases that he’s getting pretty involved with technology related to wellness. He notes that the next wave of health and wellness will come from customizing diets and supplements based on an individuals’ needs. By testing a person’s genome and getting all of their bodily indicators, Ayre notes that a specific nutritional plan can be devised that suits them best.

When asked by the vegetarian hosts what his diet currently consists of, he notes he’s currently on a Mediterranean diet with intermittent fasting, which immediately ended acid reflux. While he notes that he’s currently testing this idea on his own body, “the idea is to create a business out of it at some point.”

Finally, the hosts asked what advice Ayre would give to entrepreneurs who might want to follow in his footsteps. “If you’re going to start a business, because you think it’s going to make money, but you don’t like the industry, it’s going to be painful,” he said. “I think I would advise people to find an industry that they’re naturally attracted to, because it’s going to be a lot of work, and if you’re doing work in an area that you like, it doesn’t feel like work.”

If that industry happens to be the gambling industry, and building on Bitcoin SV, Ayre is looking to help you get started. The Ayre Group is looking to invest in companies who hope to get to the next level, and do so on the original Bitcoin SV ecosystem.

In the meantime, if you want to hear more from Ayre himself on how he’s done so well across several industries, check out the My Big Break Almost podcast below.

Calvin Ayre explores Bitcoin halving, scalability and problems it solves on Faiaside podcast

This article was originally published on CoinGeek on April 6, 2020.

Tech entrepreneur and CoinGeek founder Calvin Ayre was featured on the very first episode of the Faiaside podcast. Adam Bowcutt from Faiaside caught up with Ayre to get his insight on Bitcoin SV and blockchain technologies.

Ep 1 of FAIASIDE podcast 🔥 https://t.co/RWQqoyPy7Z with your host @AdamBowcutt and special guest @CalvinAyre Billionaire entrepreneur, investor, BSV advocate and wakeboarder… we discuss bitcoinSV Blockchain, distributed public ledger technology & more #BSV #bitcoinSV pic.twitter.com/nYk0SpCRqH

— Faiā | Blockchain Communities (@faiabrand) April 3, 2020

We encourage you to check out the Faiaside podcast on Anchor or Spotify, but in the meantime, here are a few of our favorite excerpts from Ayre’s episode.

What initially made you so passionate about BSV? 

Calvin Ayre: Well I was using it when I lived down in the Caribbean in a country called Antigua and it’s notoriously hard—in all of the islands—to do banking. So I started using it [Bitcoin] quite early and I was running my business on it and using it quite a lot at something like an enterprise-level, pretty early on. But then, people started monkeying around with it and taking it weird directions [BTC] and it stopped working the way it was.

That was kind of an upsetting moment for me but I was also an early investor in applications on top of BTC at the time, [when BTC had] the original Bitcoin protocol. But of course, that didn’t work out very well either with the way the Core group and Blockstream kept changing the protocol and making it hard and making it so it wouldn’t scale and putting all of the different obstacles in front of it. So when I met Craig in 2015 he explained to me how it should really work and the different ways it can be useful to society at large so since then I’ve just been a really big fan of what we can do with it and I think we’ve been very successful in bringing it back to where it could have been and now the future is wide open and in front of us.

Calvin, what’s the biggest problem in the blockchain technology and distributed public ledger space right now?

Calvin Aye: I think if you asked 100 people you’d probably get 100 different answers, but my personal pet peeve with the space is the massive amount of misinformation that’s intentionally pumped out by all the scammers and all the people with their little scams that are threatened by a technology that actually works and has real utility.

To me, that’s the biggest problem and that’s the one that I wake up every day fighting against because a lot of what I do is working to try to educate the world through my media company and various other things I do to try and educate the world, about the super powers that this technology has and all the things that it can do and the problems that can be solved with this technology it’s just absolutely amazing. But soon, I’m not going to have to do any talking, because there’s applications coming down the pipe like EHR Data out of the United States that’s going to put medical records on the BSV blockchain. And hopefully, that will help solve the opioid crisis and I believe the same technology can be used to deal with the pandemic that we are dealing with right now and they’re working on this right now, this is something that’s coming, something that’s being worked on and it’s going to be within the next 12 months. It’s going to prove all of the things that we’ve been talking about so it won’t be necessary for me to do any talking.

What do you foresee the future of Bitcoin SV to be?

Calvin Ayre: I’ve been saying for months now that I believe the platform wars are over and from my perspective, they were over pretty much the second the hash war was started and we got rid of all the anarchists that all went over to the other branch. Once we got all the anarchists away from the original Bitcoin protocol and there was nobody blocking us, we were free to scale and from my perspective, that’s was it. It was over.

It’s just a matter for the rest of the world to figure out that this has in fact happened, so I think the future of the platform is set in stone already it’s going to end up subsuming pretty much everything that we see around us digitally. It’s going to be layered in with the Metanet and it’s going to layer in on top of the internet. Everything that you do now is going to be done on top of Metanet and it’s going to work similar except you are going to be able to put a value to all data, which is going to change business models that exist and the applications that are built on top of it.

In the full episode…

In its entirety, Bowmann and Ayre explore the Bitcoin halving, Bitcoin’s scalability and the problems it solves, the upcoming CoinGeek New York City event, as well as influential books, memorable mottos, and much more. You can listen to the full podcast on Anchor or Spotify.

Calvin Ayre: EHR Data shows enterprise-level project could be made on top of public blockchain

This article was originally published on CoinGeek on March 6, 2020.

Bitcoin SV is finally eliminating all doubt about the viability of a public blockchain, proving that it’s possible to build massively scalable enterprise applications on the Bitcoin blockchain. Ayre Group founder Calvin Ayre expressed his excitement at all the developments taking place in the BSV ecosystem, singling out EHR Data’s healthcare data project as one of the most outstanding to date.

Ayre has always felt that there needed to be a conference in which the focus was on scaling and application development, he told CoinGeek’s Johanna Botta: “The conference was put in place to stimulate the growth of application development on top of a massively scaling public blockchain. And the only blockchain in the world that actually meets that criteria today is Bitcoin SV, the original protocol.”

Ayre is excited about the rate of development that’s taking place in the BSV ecosystem. He singled out EHR Data’s healthcare data project as one of the biggest in the history of Bitcoin. A subsidiary of the National Health Coalition, the company announced at the recently held CoinGeek London Conference that it intends to combat the opioid crisis with the help of the BSV network.

“We’ve been saying for years that this type of enterprise level project could be made on top of a public blockchain and this is the first time in history that one’s been announced. I believe this is a game changer. I think that this is going to massively accelerate the public awareness of the utility of the BSV blockchain,” Ayre said.

Ayre is also excited about the progress that UNISOT has made as it seeks to make BSV the blockchain of choice for the supply chain management industry. The Norwegian company announced launched the SeaFoodChain, its BSV-powered solution for the seafood industry, at the CoinGeek London Conference. The solution will cover the entire supply chain, from the sea to the plate.

The CoinGeek Conference will be heading to New York next, Ayre revealed. While the exact dates are yet to be set, it’s scheduled to take place in September or October this year and it will be the best one yet. With New York being a bigger financial center than London, the event will be bigger and better and will host over 4,000 attendants, he said.

Calvin Ayre reaches out for further investment opportunities in Bitcoin (BSV)

This article was originally published on CoinGeek on February 20, 2020.

On the first day of the CoinGeek’s London Conference Paul Rajchgod, Managing Director, Private Equity for Ayre Group set out guidelines for developers and business looking for investment from Calvin Ayre.

To date Calvin’s investment portfolio includes: Tokenized, Unisot, nChain, Kronoverse, Handcash, FRNT Financial, Streamanity, Pixel Wallet, MoneyButton, TAAL, CentBee, CoinMe, sCrypt, Planaria Corp and Core Scientific.

But it is not over, Ayre Group Private Equity is ready to take on more investment.

Investment and interest in BSV is growing; why?

• Institutional investors have been on the sidelines, waiting for a proven enterprise Blockchain. With BSV, this now exists.
• Institutional money invests in businesses they hope will scale globally, with sustainable margins; in big business, you scale or you die.
• The various enhancements only on BSV, which all point to massive scaling, have started to attract enterprises big and small, and the investment is following.

Put simply: Only BSV scales and that is why Calvin Ayre is looking for further investments that can built on the BSV blockchain, the fastest-growing chain ever.

Specific areas of interest to us that address factors unique to BSV:

• Applications that can generate high volumes of micropayment & data transactions
• Ventures that advance the Metanet
• B2B infrastructure for other BSV applications
• Technology that allows legacy businesses to easily integrate with BSV applications

To watch CoinGeek London on the live stream click here.